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Speaking with TechGraph’s editorial team, Abhilash Narahari, Co-founder and CEO of Ivy Homes said, “Real Estate is the largest asset class in India.”
Read the complete interview:
TechGraph: Could you help give a sense of how far Ivy Homes has come since its existence?
Abhilash Narahari: We launched Ivy Homes in January this year. Things have been coming along pretty well. We’re currently making over 200 offers every month and making sales of about $1Mn a month.
TechGraph: How is Ivy Homes facilitating the entire property buying and selling process entirely digitally?
Abhilash Narahari: Real estate is ages behind most industries when it comes to transacting digitally. There haven’t been too many improvements since the digital classifieds. At this point, we’re buying homes through an almost entirely digital experience.
We make our initial offer without a visit to the property entirely through the pricing and liquidity predicted by our data science model. Before we make the final offer, our team visits the property to assess on-site conditions
TechGraph: How is technology transforming the real estate sector? Do you think the trend had taken hold even before the pandemic-induced disruptions?
Abhilash Narahari: Technology is transforming real estate on multiple fronts.
- Availability of data – Demand and supply data is available at a previously unseen scale. This has enabled multiple new business models to be built including that of Ivy Homes.
- Virtual tours/ staging – Through VR, customers have a much better feel of properties before they make their physical visit.
- Legal Tech – Property diligence has always been a bugbear for property transactions. ML-assisted due diligence along with digitized property records is making it faster and cheaper to do property due diligence.
A lot of this progress would’ve happened independently of the pandemic. However, Covid likely accelerated it in some cases – especially around virtual tours.
TechGraph: How do you see technologies namely Artificial Intelligence, and Cloud, with regards to their relevance across the sector? What does the future look like?
Abhilash Narahari: Artificial intelligence is just about beginning to make its mark on the real estate sector. There is tremendous more scope for using AI/ML. We have built Ivy Homes with a heavy focus on Machine Learning to price homes, build out our data infrastructure, and assess risk.
AI also has a very large use case for mortgage providers in assessing the value and risk of a property. I’ve also spoken earlier about the use of AI in Legal tech which should make diligence a lot easier.
TechGraph: What are the trends in house buyers and real estate?
Abhilash Narahari: Real Estate is (fortunately) one of those asset classes that have very little volatility. Since 2021, we’ve seen a steady increase in demand for homes – especially in Bangalore. We’ve seen this across configurations and micro markets.
TechGraph: What is Ivy Homes’ growth trajectory?
Abhilash Narahari: At Ivy Homes, we’ve been able to hit a monthly run rate of $1Mn in under 10 months. We have aggressive plans for the next year and are targeting to grow 4x.
TechGraph: What is the roadmap for Ivy Homes, going forward?
Abhilash Narahari: Real Estate is the largest asset class in India. We’re barely scratching the surface in terms of building a transactional platform for Home sellers and buyers. We plan to expand to the top 10 within 2 years. In terms of our product, we’re looking to launch services across multiple adjacencies of the home-selling transaction.